Tehran Bureau has compiled a round-up of seasoned lawmakers as well as lesser-known members of parliament whose candidacies illustrate a realignment of Iran’s political scene. These examples start with the more reform-minded and move across the political spectrum to the most conservative.

Mohammad Reza Aref

Reformist politician Aref was first vice president under President Mohammad Khatami (1997 to 2005). He is currently a member of the expediency discernment council, an advisory body to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Aref held different posts during Khatami’s presidency, including the minister of information and communications technology from 1997 to 2000, and vice president from 2001 to 2005. Aref registered as a parliamentary candidate for the 2008 election, but later withdrew to protest the disqualification of reformist candidates by the executive and supervisory boards.

Born in 1951 in Iran’s central city of Yazd, Aref holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He has taught at various Iranian universities since 1982.

On 15 February, he attended an event at Amirkabir University along with Ali Motahari demanding the release of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the Green Movement leaders who have been under house arrest since 2011. “The house arrest should either come to an end, or a legal authority should decide upon it,” he said.

Aref remains a supporter of Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Soheila Jelodarzadeh

A reformist candidate, Jelodarzadeh has served as a representative in three different parliaments. She has been the only woman to serve on the parliamentary board of directors, a post she held from 2002-2004.

During her time in parliament, Jelodarzadeh focused on the empowerment of women through workforce participation, cautious to remain within the permissible framework emphasizing women’s roles as mothers and homemakers. She advocated women’s access to education and employment, but stressed that such employment should be part-time and not interfere with family-related duties.

Jelodarzadeh opposes gender discrimination in the workplace and believes women should be able to work in every sector.

In her recent interview with Shargh newspaper, she said she hoped women would occupy 30% of seats in the next parliament.

Ali Motahari

Two terms in office have seen this controversial MP stir blur the line between traditional factional allegiances. Motahari sees himself as both a principlist and a reformist, and has raised the ire of fundamentalists for his criticism of their policies.

A woman snaps pictures with her mobile phone in front of a campaign poster that rads ‘I will vote for Ali Motahari’. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

Unlike the majority of the principlists who have repeatedly condemned the 2009 post-presidential protests in Iran, Motahari has been critical of the government crackdowns on protesters, as well as the house arrest of Green Movement leaders Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and Karroubi.

However, Motahari remains a conservative on cultural and social matters, including proper hijab for women. In 2013, he organized a parliament screening in which he showed photos of Iranian women in figure-hugging attire. “The interior minister should explain why he is indifferent to women wearing tights in Tehran and some other cities,” he said. “Since the Islamic revolution, the accepted dress code [for women] has been the chador, or a knee-long manteau, with a headscarf or veil.”

Motahari is the son of the noted Islamic scholar Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, who was assassinated in 1979. He is also the brother-in-law of Ali Larijani, another parliamentary candidate and the current speaker of the parliament.

Despite his conservative positions, Motahari has often locked horns with right-wing MPs. One parliamentary session last January even resulted in a physical altercation between Motahari and fundamentalists, who attacked him after he demanded the release of Mousavi and Karroubi.

The reformists, meanwhile, have welcomed Motahari to their ranks, adding him to their list of preferred candidates. Earlier this week, Motahari called on Iranians not to vote for those candidates who are against the nuclear deal.

A supporter of Rafsanjani and President Hassan Rouhani, Motahari also appears at the top of the list of Sedaye Mellat (the Nation’s Voice), which features a combination of reformist and principlist candidates.

Ahmad Tavakoli

Four-time MP Tavakoli is a principlist politician. In 1993 and 1997, he entered the presidential race but lost to Rafsanjani and Khatami, respectively.

Ahmad Tavakoli is a conservative representative of Tehran in the Iranian parliament and the former director of the Majlis research center. Photograph: Handout

Tavakoli, who was initially a supporter of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but later became one of his fiercest critics, mostly on economic issues.

In June 2014, Tavakoli accused Ahmadinejad’s administration of widespread corruption, and said he only voted for Ahmadinejad in 2009 because he believed him to be less of a threat to provoking society against the supreme leader than Mousavi.

Tavakoli has been generally supportive of the Rouhani government.

Tavakoli has a PhD in economics from the University of Nottingham, where he went on a scholarship from Iran’s ministry of science. His scholarship later became a controversial issue after some accused him of misusing the financial aid. In 2012 he claimed he received the scholarship based upon an order of Ayatollah Khamenei, but offered no further explanation.

Currently in parliament, Tavakoli’s name is on the list of candidates promoted by the coalition of principlists.

Tavakoli is Larijanis’ second-cousin, and his wife is Larijani’s first cousin. He has seven children. One of his two sons, Zahir, is married to the daughter of Sadegh Zibakalam, a prominent political analyst closely aligned with the reformists.

Ali Larijani

Two-time MP and current parliament speaker, Larijani has sometimes been described as a ‘moderate principlist’ whose political views dovetail with those of pragmatists such as Rouhani.

Surrounded by lawmakers in 2006, Ali Larijani, center, was then Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, and secretary of supreme national security council. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

According to Morteza Haji, a reformist politician, Larijani’s support for the nuclear deal and Rouhani’s cabinet weakened his standing among the principlists.

Larijani’s name is conspicuously absent from the principlists’ preferred list in Qom, the seat of Iran’s clerical elite, but appears on the preferred list of the conservative group Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom. “I am participating in the election independently, but that doesn’t mean that I am not a principlist,” Larijani said on 12 February.

He was deputy chief of staff at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from 1982-1992, and served as minister of culture for two years during the presidency of Rafsanjani. In 1994, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed him chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, a post he held until 2004.

On 22 February Iran’s top military man, Quds commander Ghasem Soleimani spoke in praise of Larijani, calling him an influential person when it comes to “regional developments,” and reiterating Larijani’s longtime support of “revolutionary movements.”

Larijani is married to Ali Motahari’s sister. His younger brother, Sadegh, is the head of the judiciary, while his older brother, Javad, heads the judiciary’s human rights council. The Larijani family is widely considered to hold Ayatollah Khamenei’s trust on matters.

Gholam Ali Haddad Adel

Four-time MP Gholam Ali Haddad Adel is a top advisor to Khamenei. He was parliament speaker between 2005-2008, and is by some estimates geared to replace current speaker Ali Larijani in the next parliament.

Haddad Adel is known to be among Khamenei’s circle of confidants. He is a member of the expediency discernment council, whose members are directly appointed by the Supreme Leader. His daughter is married to Mojtaba Khamenei, one of the Supreme Leader’s sons.

In 2012, Haddad Adel put himself forward for the speaker seat, but lost the race to Larijani. Ali Motahari, a conservative member of parliament, lashed out against Haddad Adel, calling him unsuitable for the position. “People like Haddad think standing up for people’s rights means is tantamount to acting against the regime,” Motahari said. “These people will resort to any cruelty with the excuse of trying to preserve the regime.”

Haddad Adel was born in 1945 in Tehran. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy from Tehran University, where he is still on the faculty of the philosophy department. Beside his education in the social sciences, Haddad Adel also holds a master’s degree in physics.

During the past three decades, he held various cabinet positions, including vice minister of culture and Islamic guidance and vice minister of higher education. He also headed Iran’s academy of Persian language and literature.

His name is on the preferred list of 30 principlist parliamentary candidates in Tehran.

Laleh Eftekhari

Principlist Eftekhari first won a parliamentary seat in 2004, and has been an MP ever since. She is currently speaker of the women’s faction in parliament, but is often criticized by women’s rights activists for her conservative views.

In this 2008 file photo, a supporter of parliamentary candidate Laleh Eftekhari holds up her picture. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

In August 2008, Eftekhari spoke out in support of a controversial section of the family protection law, which allowed men to acquire a second wife without seeking their current wife’s consent: “Based on God’s order and Sharia, a man is not obliged to seek his first wife’s consent to remarry.”

In December 2014, she told Adineh Tehran, a weekly, it’s damaging for women to hold “masculine jobs”.

A mother of three sons, Eftekhari has a doctorate in theology from Tehran University. Her husband and father were both killed fighting in the Iran-Iraq war.

Eftekhari’s name is on the coalition of principlists’ list of preferred candidates.

Denise Hassanzade Ajiri is a staff writer and editor at the Tehran Bureau, an independent media organisation hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureau